


461. memoriam

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [312]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Bad dreams?” Helena tries.“Beth,” Sarah says.





	461. memoriam

When nightmares wake Helena again and she tiptoes into the kitchen, she sees Sarah already sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea. She looks so tired that it’s sucked life out of her, left her bruise-grey and hollow. Helena hesitates for a second, not sure whether she should duck back to her bedroom and pretend to go back to sleep, but it’s too late: Sarah has looked up and seen her.

“Hey,” she says, and Helena walks into the kitchen like it was her plan the whole time. The box of chocolate packets is still in the cabinet, so she grabs one and dumps it in a glass she’s filled with water. Powder floats. She sits down at the table and watches islands of it crash into each other in her glass.

“Are you alright,” she tells one frantic spinning blob.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. She sounds unconvincing. Helena looks up and sees Sarah frowning at her own glass, looking for islands that aren’t there.

“Bad dreams?” Helena tries.

“Beth,” Sarah says.

“Oh.” Helena looks back down. The powder hasn’t dissolved yet. Usually she drinks it like this, but she’s embarrassed to do it in front of Sarah in case she’s doing it wrong somehow.

“I don’t know her,” she says, tentative. “Do you want to talk.”

“She was—” Sarah says, and stops. “I don’t know. I never even met her. You should ask Alison or Cosima, yeah? If you want to know about her. I don’t know shit about her. She’s a stranger.” Her leg is jumping under the table and it’s shaking it, a little bit. Ripples spread in Helena’s glass. She picks it up and drinks, feels bits of chocolate crumble between her teeth. Tastes like powder. She swallows.

“But you dream about her,” Helena says.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sarah says, less to Helena and more to herself. “Doesn’t matter.”

Frantic anger is scratching at Helena’s chest. She reaches out and curls her hand around Sarah’s, like an anchor. She doesn’t say anything.

Sarah looks down at the table and watches their hands; lightly, like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, she flips her hand over so their fingers are laced together. “She couldn’t do it,” Sarah says. “She was this – cop, yeah, and everyone needed her to be brave and she couldn’t do it and she offed herself.” The words fall out on the table in a tangle. Sarah watches their fingers twist together. Helena watches Sarah.

“What does she say to you,” Helena says. “In your dreams.”

“She says I’m brave,” Sarah says. Her voice cracks and tapes itself back together as she speaks. “She says I’m doin’ better at protecting our sisters than she ever did, and I’m gonna be just fine.”

“You are brave,” Helena says, and Sarah just shakes her head. Helena doesn’t know if the words are wrong because they aren’t coming from a dead woman, or because they’re coming from a mouth dry from powder chocolate. Either way Helena is the wrong person for this, she knows, she knows.

“Sarah,” Helena says. “You are brave and you are strong and you are good.” The words should be everything but they aren’t a help to Sarah. Sarah clings to Helena’s hand tight, but the words she lets slip by her.

Helena squeezes her hand and Sarah squeezes back harder and it hurts and neither of them let go. They are clinging to each other, here in the dark. “I am glad,” Helena says, and stops, and says: “that. I am glad that Beth is there for you, in your dreams, to tell you things like this. But. I am sorry that it hurts enough to make you awake.”

Sarah doesn’t answer, but she stops squeezing as hard. She sighs to the table. With her other hand she lifts her mug of tea to her mouth and drinks. “I miss her,” she says quietly. “Which is shit, yeah, I didn’t even know her.”

“Sometimes people are easier when they are stories,” Helena says. “I missed you. Before I knew you.”

(She did. She dreamed about Sarah all the time, before she even knew Sarah’s name.)

( _I dreamed that we were friends_ and she did and she did.)

“You don’t miss me now?” Sarah says, voice light enough that it could be a joke, if it was a joke. Which it isn’t. Helena can hear it in the cracks.

“No,” Helena says. “I would miss you if you were gone.” She clasps her hand around Sarah’s wrist, feels her sister’s heartbeat up against the pad of her thumb. Sarah is here. This is not a dream; Helena is no good at dreaming heartbeats.

“Don’t tell the others,” Sarah says quietly.

“I know,” Helena says. “I can keep secrets.

“I heard stories that missing is easier when other people are also missing,” she says. “But I only know how to feel it by myself. So. I won’t take the missing away from you.”

“Grief,” Sarah says. When Helena doesn’t say anything Sarah says: “That’s the word for it, Helena. Grief.”

“Grief,” Helena echoes. She lets go of Sarah’s hand. “I hope your dreams are better, _sestra_ ,” she says. “I want good dreams for you.”

“You too, meathead,” Sarah says. “Dream about sandwiches.”

Helena’s dreams are never about anything like sandwiches. “I will,” she says. “Only if you dream about chips, so that there can be chips also for the sandwiches.”

Sarah laughs a little bit, a surprised husk of a sound. “You got it,” she says. “You, me, and a ghost. We’ll have a picnic.”

Helena smiles at the thought of it, despite herself. She wraps her hands back around her cup; the cold of it sinks into her palms. “It will be good,” she says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “It’ll be great.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
